February 2013 ...and a New Goal

Wednesday, March 06, 2013

A New Goal:
Since my husband and I will celebrate our 5th Anniversary this May, we wanted to do something special. We found a great deal for a ziplining adventure near Austin/Lake Travis a few weeks ago and decided that this would be our anniversary celebration. We plan to make this a weekend trip including the zipline tour on one day and other activities (still to be determined) on the other day. What does this have to do with goals? There is a weight limit for participating. I have to weigh 250 pounds or less to be able to do it. I now weigh 260 pounds. That means I need to drop 10 pounds by the time we go. Now we have not picked a definitive weekend yet, but we bought it through LivingSocial and our vouchers expire on June 26th. This is in exactly 16 weeks from today. Now this seems like a long time to lose 10 pounds, but it is not for me. I lose very slowly, at one-half pound to one pound per week. So with this deadline, I need to step it up and do more (especially exercising that is) to lose the weight in time. I would really like to go on our little trip on the weekend of May 11th/12th, since our anniversary is on May 8th. This is just 9½ weeks from now! That means I have to lose at least one pound per week to get there. This is my goal. Lose at least one pound per week so that we can go ziplining for our anniversary. Now facing my fear of height to actually do the ziplining is another challenge, but I am taking one step at a time. By the way, if anyone knows some insider tips for our Austin trip, you are welcome to share them. :-)

February Victories:
1. I maintained my January loss of five pounds, even though I barely exercised at all in February and did not track my food for most of the time. I kept eating healthy foods in reasonable portions and only had very little junk food (chocolate and ice cream).
2. I took the stairs up to the office more often (4th floor) and went outside after my lunch to walk around the office building for 10 minutes a couple of times. I noticed an increase in energy on the days I did this. I will definitely keep doing this and hope to remember doing it every day now.

February Setbacks:
1. I did not track my food, except for a few days.
2. After a pretty bad cold knocked me out early in February for almost two weeks, I was not able to exercise at all until I started to recover. Yet, even after recovering I only exercised a little, except for talking the stairs at work a few times, my lunch walks, a few 30-minute walks, and a few mini strength training sessions of about 10 minutes each. I most certainly did not exercise daily, like I should.
3. I put too big of a workload on my plate this month. I accepted a huge translation job and sacrificed workout time for work time. I will not do this again. As much as I like the extra income and enjoy the work, in the future my client(s) will either have agree to a longer turnaround time or I will have to turn down the offer. Lesson learned.

February Summary:
My victory-to-setback ratio was 2:3. I liked my January ratio of 5:2 a lot better. I want to at least keep the number of victories greater than that of the setbacks. February has been a struggle for me in many ways. I have worked too much, slept too little, and rarely exercised. I was under a lot of stress this month (not just from work) and I am happy that I was able to at least keep my emotional eating at bay for most of the time, not gaining any weight but maintaining my loss so far. I wish I had made more time for exercise since working out is wonderful for stress relief. I am definitely working on my time management and priorities in March and going forward.